by A. N. Wilson
There were three coffins on one side of the little building and four on the other, grey with mould and dust.
‘I think I’ve got the idea,’ she said brightly. ‘I’ll come out now.’
‘I think not,’ said Jeeves. She could hear the smile in his voice, but she could not see his expression very clearly. His form was silhouetted against the entrance, which he filled. She could see the gun he was holding.
‘Lie down,’ he told her.
‘The floor’s wet.’
Jeeves had been replaced by a cockney voice, which could hardly articulate its anger.
‘You’ll lie down,’ this voice said. ‘Lie on one of the coffins. Or we get nasty, innit?’
THIRTY-EIGHT
There were several red helicopters in the sky, and any quantity of vans – police, military, ambulances – screeching and wailing through the streets of south London towards Crickleden Cemetery.
Sinclo waited in the agreed spot.
In the previous quarter of an hour, he had ceased entirely to be a failed journalist, or a wanderer with no idea of his place in the world. He had returned in heart to being a soldier. By running at the double, he had reached Furbelow Park in less than ten minutes. Even knowing the army as well as he did, he was surprised as well as impressed by the expedition and precision with which the whole operation was managed. One of the red helicopters landed near the tennis courts. Three figures emerged. Two were uniformed SAS officers, who ran at once to the crumbling wall dividing park from cemetery. The other, tall, bald and unmistakable was Brigadier Courtenay. He waved. There was something almost genial about the wave, something between a salute and a halloo!
‘He’s just the other side of that wall in a mausoleum. He’s in the sights of about six guns,’ said the Brigadier to Sinclo. ‘You’re not to worry. She’ll be all right.’
‘She?’
‘You’re not to worry – but he’s got Rachael Pearl as a hostage.’
THIRTY-NINE
Rachel was bound round the ankles with some rags, and round her wrists with a length of plastic-coated rope of the sort used for washing-lines. The cord, which was very tight, bit into her flesh and impeded the circulation – one of the reasons, apart from abject terror, that she felt moments of merciful wooziness, as though she might pass out, or wake and find that the previous quarter of an hour had been a bad dream. The corners of her lips were bleeding, she could taste the blood. Her tights had been used to gag her very tightly. Her trousers were wedged over her head, and she could only breathe with some difficulty. At first she had whimpered, vainly hoping that the pathos of the sound would excite his pity, but it merely made him worse. He had not raped her. But she had felt the blade of a knife being run up and down her thighs – first the blade, then the sharp end – not enough to cut, but enough to leave the unmistakable knowledge that he was running the knife closer and closer to the top of her legs.
She felt that she could perhaps bear the pain if he (or was it they?) would only stop talking.
‘Wot? Never seen one of them before? That’s pussy, that is.’
‘Who’s saying I never seen it?’
‘You did, if I may say so, sir, seem a little surprised at all that hair.’
‘Don’t touch.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Yes, you woz. I said don’t touch.’
‘Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid …’
‘You could shave it – scrape the beard off. Don’t seem natural, a bitch wiv a beard between ‘er legs.’
‘What wiv – what wiv do wa cut ‘er?’
‘Excuse me, sir, but the Stanley knife, if I may say so, is hardly adequate to your purpose.’
‘I could pull some of it out.’
‘Cut some other bit of her. Cut her foot off.’
‘See that – you never seen it before. Admit it!’
‘Course I have.’
‘You’re all talk. You only done it with Mr Currey. All the rest was talk, wunnit? You never ‘ad a bitch.’
‘Don’t know what you mean.’
‘If you weren’t a poof yerself, you’d give her one.’
‘Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee …’
‘You could cut off, say, a couple of toes. Post them to her mum. Get a loada dosh. They’re all loaded, Jews.’
‘Make her beg for mercy. Tuli, Tuli, make her beg for mercy.’
‘Or a tit. Not a toe. A tit. Cut one of them off.’
‘I want my mum. I want Mummy,’ said the little boy.
FORTY
In the first Book of Kings, the prophet Elijah inveighed against King Ahab and Jezebel his Queen. Elijah ran before Ahab’s chariot to the city of Jezreel, ‘when the heaven was black with clouds and wind and there was a great rain’. Vivyan Chell had preached many a sermon about the prophet Elijah. Ahab’s question to the prophet – ‘Art thou he that troubleth Israel?’ – was the question which all the powerful people of this world should scornfully ask of the Church, of today’s prophets and martyrs. If Christians were not troubling to their fellow-citizens, then their Christianity was lukewarm. So he had preached. So he had lived. And now in his frenzy, in which he was no longer sure of his God or his faith, but he knew very clearly his enemy, Vivyan ran like the prophet through wind and rain.
What passed through his head felt like the calculations and practical considerations which must always engage the intelligence of the good officer in the field. He was calculating how long it would be, after Thimjo got the message from the Happy Band, before their joint operation was successful: a simultaneous series of explosions in the House of Lords, the Churchill Hotel, Portman Square, and the office building in Bermondsey. It was imperative, moreover, that the arsenal at present stored in the cemetery be moved, and the reserve troops mobilized.
But although these calculations appeared to be passing through his brain in the rational pattern that he had been trained as a soldier to follow, they were really shapes in his head, stories he was telling himself. As he ran, he heard the actual explosions of former times, the sound of battle during the Lugardian civil war when he was wounded forty years earlier. In his head, these blended with the no less real explosions which he had not heard, those in the copper mines set off recently by the Happy Band.
Elijah the prophet ran in the rain before the chariot of the corrupt king of Israel. Elijah the prophet was the type of all religious witness against the corruption of the sinful state; he was the archetype of holy anarchist, the forerunner of all organized rebellion. He was Archbishop Romero standing out against the American-paid right-wing gangsters who were running Salvador; he was Bonhoeffer loading his revolver to shoot the Führer; he was Becket denouncing Henry II. Elijah the man of God had withdrawn into the desert and been fed by ravens. He had also taken lodging with a woman of Zarephath, who feared that if he lived under her roof, he would consume her last meagre supplies. And yet, so long as the man of God was with them, the barrel of meal did not waste, nor did the cruse of oil fail.
And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, 0 thou man of God? art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?
Panting with overexcitement, and with his heart now thumping louder than the noise of his Doc Martens on the pavements, the man of God ran, through the cemetery gates and up the broad drive which led to the mortuary chapel.
The guns were firing in his head, the mines were exploding at his feet; and yet he thought of his women of Zarephath, their welcoming breasts, their revealed energy, as nakedly, so often, he had filled them with his justice like mountains high-soaring above. And he thought of Nontando, his large-breasted Zinariyan wife in all but name; and he thought of Mercy Topling during their unforgettable encounter, her thighs, her fingers, her smell. The enemy were here. But yea though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for thou, Mercy, art with me, and my rod and staff will comfort thee.
As he ran towards the mausolea which edged the northern wall of the cemetery, his keen military eyes at first took in the distant horizons, the smudge of rain-sodden Catford and its high-rise blocks. Only a second or two later did he focus on the mausolea themselves, and in particular one of them. At first he thought he saw a monk carrying a dismembered human body.
What he in fact saw, and now recognized, was Tuli, Peter d’Abo, hooded in his dark cagoule, and draped not with the monastic scapular, but with black plastic bin liners. In his arms was not half a young woman, but a woman whose head was covered with cloth, and whose top half was swathed, but whose legs and waist were naked. It was not possible at this distance to be sure at first whether or not the body was dead. Then the legs kicked.
Tuli had a hostage.
The whirr of helicopters was not part of Vivyan’s fantasy. Two red choppers hovered over the graveyard. As he stopped in his tracks, the priest turned and took in at least six shielded figures, armed and in camouflage gear, kneeling at strategic points around the cemetery.
The Brigadier was talking through a megaphone.
‘Stand still! Both of you, stand still!’
‘Tuli,’ called Vivyan. ‘Put her down!’
‘Chell!’ – the Brigadier’s voice once again. ‘That was an order. Stand where you are. Repeat, stand where you are.’
The boy was shouting something, but it was not possible, above the noise of the helicopter, to know what he was saying. He was holding something to the woman’s waist. Disobeying the bellowed commands of the Brigadier, Chell walked slowly forward towards the boy and the woman. He felt in the pocket of his donkey-jacket and released the safety catch of his own revolver. Only a few yards further, and he could hear the boy.
‘Come any closer and I shoot!’
One long arm was round the woman’s neck. He was dragging her like a sack. The other arm, it was clear now, held a small gun, which he sometimes held to her head, and sometimes jabbed roughly at her pubic bush.
‘She’s the one who betrayed you, Father! She’s the spy!’
‘Tuli, put her down!’
‘I’m telling you – she brought all these soldiers, these planes and choppers, she’s …’
Vivyan could not hear the last part of this sentence, as the helicopters swooped lower. A burst of gunfire from one of them narrowly missed him.
‘Tuli, I beg you, put her down!’
The boy was now close enough to be in Vivyan’s sights.
The helicopter swooped once more.
Vivyan ran towards the boy and the woman. As he did so, another burst of gunfire came from the helicopter. There was also gunfire from some graves behind him. He felt a thud in his right shoulder-blade, as if someone had punched him hard. The blow was enough to make him fall, but as he did so he looked up and had the quickness of mind to produce his pistol from his pocket.
‘I’m killing her for you, Father. I’m killing her for …’
Vivyan was spreadeagled on the path; not immediately in great pain, but greatly weakened. He tried to raise himself on one knee, and to call out, ‘Tuli. My son, my son!’
The child smiled. Vivyan was close enough to see those smudge-grey eyes, and to be sure, before he fell back, that he had landed a bullet straight between them.
FORTY-ONE
The dawn had broken simultaneously with the monk’s death. That was about half an hour ago. And now, Mercy stood outside the house, under a large portico, watching the golden light streaming through white, earth-hugging cloud, touching the variegated oranges and yellows of the oaks and sycamores in their autumn splendour. Beyond the front lawn were fields, where, in billows of mist and sun-sparkling dew, cows peacefully grazed.
It took weeks, months perhaps, for her to take in those moments after Vivyan’s passing. At the time, she was in a state of hypertension which precluded the possibility of noticing, exactly, how she felt. Everything was odd, so that she accepted it, as if it were a dream.
After Vivyan had died, they had drifted out of the infirmary, each having made their private farewells to the corpse. The monks were still praying over it. Lord Longmore, who was staying in the house, must have gone back to his room. Mercy was helped from the infirmary bed by the tall old guy, the Brigadier, whose touch gave off no sexual hint whatever. Rachel had left the room with Sinclo Manners – a young man that Mercy had, for some months, marked down as gorgeous. They had found their way out into the corridor. It was a huge place. Later, trying to reconstruct it in her mind, or describe it to friends, Mercy found herself saying that it was a cross between a hospital and a school: a long corridor led from the infirmary, which had been built on to the back of the old mansion. Then you found yourself in a cavernous Victorian hall, painted white. There was a big statue of Jesus in the hall, with his arms outstretched. And over the fireplace there was a painting of the geezer who’d founded the place, an old bishop with a beard.
It wasn’t what she’d have thought of, if you’d said the word ‘monastery’. There was no Gothic cloister, no pointed arch in sight. Instead, by the huge front door – as big as the door of the town hall where Mercy worked in her dull clerical job – stood the tubby, crazed figure of little Len, shouting and swearing at the young monk who had let him in.
‘I’ll go where I sodding like!’
That had been his response when the novice had told him, ‘You can’t go down there!’
Was he too late? Of course he was too late, if he’d hoped to see Father Vivyan alive.
Mercy was aware at the time only of raised voices, of an older monk coming to see what all the fuss was about, of exchanges of dialogue. ‘You don’t understand, Father! I’ve got to see Father Vivyan, I’ve got to see Father Vivyan!’
This was Len. He was like a junkie bursting into a pharmacy to demand his fix.
‘There’s so much I’ve got to … I must … I must!’
‘Father Vivyan died a few moments ago!’
‘But he can’t …’
Something was murmured which Mercy had not heard.
Apparently, the older monk led Len off to the infirmary, where he was allowed to see the body. It was months later that she heard of what had ensued there: Len had run into the room, and ripped the sheet off the corpse.
‘You can’t do this! You can’t be dead! We never … Oh, Jesus, we never …’ He could not finish the sentence. It was not clear what he never did. Was it like Henry II, in a film she’d seen once with Trevor in happier days, when the knights had been to murder Becket, and the king repented of the evil he’d done to the saint? They never would know. Three months later, Lennie was to meet his own death: a stupendous heart attack at the top of the escalator in LenMar House. He would cascade downwards, rolling past the swooping plane tree and the cascade, to die prostrate at the feet of a commissionaire. They never would find out whether it was guilt that brought on the attack, or knowledge of his impending ruin, or simply one heap of fries, one slice of Dundee cake and Vacherin too many.
Mercy was aptly named. Her heart was broken, but neither in the moments at Kelvedone after Vivyan died nor in the weeks which followed could she find it in her heart to blame any of them. Lennie had behaved like a total and utter bastard towards her. But now that Peter was dead, she wondered what Lennie, or anyone else, could have done to save her son. She had known for years that he was not quite right; tried to hide it from herself; then when this became impossible, tried to stop loving the boy. She had seen what his – how could she describe it? His illness? His condition? – had done to himself, to the family, to Trevor, to Brad and Lucius, to teachers, to her mum … She could hate the effect it had, but she could not hate Peter. Her beautiful, mysterious boy! She thought not of the bad, recent times, but of the attractive child he had been. In those days, the dreams and the fantasies and the different voices had all added enchantment to life.
‘Who are we today?’ she’d ask him, when he was three, four, five.
‘I’m not Peter, I’m a wolf!’
or ‘I’m not Peter, I’m an angel!’ Those had been the insistent boasts of her little man, as she toddled him to the shops, or pushed him on a swing in Furbelow Park.
‘Peter, come here!’
Silence. He would ignore her totally, until she had selected the right ‘personality’ to call. Only when she had remembered to call for ‘Wolf’ or ‘Angel’ or ‘Batman’ would he heed her voice. Mercy came to feel that though she loved sex, and men, and people, and Trevor and the boys, and her mum, she had never been ‘in love’: not in the way people were in books or films. Her heart had been prepared for all eternity for one great love: her love of Peter. And so it would always be. She could love no one else as she loved that boy.
That was why, though she felt numb with sorrow in the days after his death, and she was to pass from this numbness into an everlasting mourning for her son, she could feel no bitterness: she could see so clearly, as the years went on, that the devils in him would only have moved from triumph to triumph, creating havoc of all kinds.
Father Vivyan had understood this. He had not killed Peter. He had killed the demons. Though it was a peace of infinite sadness, Mercy was now at peace as she had not been for more than a decade, since the first intimations of Peter’s character had been manifest to her.
And, oh, she was lucky to have been with Vivyan at the end! The good fortune which led her from Mum’s flat in Crickleden to the vicarage and to the ambulances … the whole muddled scene of how it had happened … she could not recollect how one thing led to another. All she knew was that she was there. She had held her dead boy in her arms before they took him away for autopsy. And somehow she had stayed beside the wounded Vivyan and come with him and Rachel Pearl in the ambulance.
She had wondered, Mercy, about the relationship between the monk and this beautiful young woman. Instinct told her, correctly, that it had not involved sex. When Mercy sat beside the bedside of the dying old man, she had wanted him so much, wanted every bit of him one last time, wanted his voice and his comfort, but wanted what she had found down there beneath the monkish sheets, oh boy, oh man. They’d watched, the poof monks, as she’d gently massaged him, but they couldn’t really stop her, and it made her happy that while they commended him to Jesus and Mary he’d died with the biggest hard-on in the world.
